With its high electrical conductivity and optical transparency, indium tin oxide is one of the most widely used materials for touchscreens, plasma displays, and flexible electronics. But its rapidly escalating price has forced ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new, wearable sensor that uses silver nanowires to monitor electrophysiological signals, such as electrocardiography (EKG) or electromyography (EMG). The new ...

A large team of researchers with members from MIT, IBM, NASA's JPL and Columbia University has developed a process that that enables scalable integration of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) on a range ...

If in the future electrodes are inserted into the human brain - either for research purposes or to treat diseases - it may be appropriate to give them a 'coat' of nanowires that could make them less irritating for the brain ...

A new type of 'nanowire' crystals that fuses semiconducting and metallic materials on the atomic scale could lay the foundation for future semiconducting electronics. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen are behind ...

(Phys.org)—By wearing clothes that have been dip-coated in a silver nanowire (AgNW) solution that is highly radiation-insulating, a person may stay so warm in the winter that they can greatly reduce or even eliminate their ...

(Phys.org)—In the ongoing effort to make communications secure, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) theoretically provides a solution – but to the delight of increasingly sophisticated hackers, falls short in real-world systems ...

A researcher from Missouri University of Science and Technology has developed a new way to grow nanowire arrays with a determined diameter, length and uniform consistency. This approach to growing nanomaterials will improve ...

Nanowire

A nanowire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (10−9 meters). Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. At these scales, quantum mechanical effects are important — hence such wires are also known as "quantum wires". Many different types of nanowires exist, including metallic (e.g., Ni, Pt, Au), semiconducting (e.g., Si, InP, GaN, etc.), and insulating (e.g., SiO2,TiO2). Molecular nanowires are composed of repeating molecular units either organic (e.g. DNA) or inorganic (e.g. Mo6S9-xIx).

The nanowires could be used, in the near future, to link tiny components into extremely small circuits. Using nanotechnology, such components could be created out of chemical compounds.